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Jules Maigret
Jules Amedée François Maigret was born in 1877 and died in the late 1970s. He was a prominent French police officer who solved many cases during the twentieth century. Early Life Jules Maigret was born in 1877 in central France, not far from Moulins, as the only son of a farmer and his wife. Jules' father managed an estate of 7,500 acres, which included at least twenty small farms. His grandfather (who died when Jules was five) had been a tenant farmer there, and so had at least three generations of Maigrets before that, all of whom had tilled the same soil. Jules Maigret's father had come from a family of seven or eight children, most of whom had died of typhus, leaving only his father and his father's sister (who later married a baker and settled in Nantes). Jules' father went to high school at Moulins (which was unusual for a farmer's son), largely because of an interest taken in him by the village priest. After spending two years at an agricultural school, he returned home to join the staff of the chateau as assistant estate manager. The Maigrets lived in an attractive, one-story, rose-colored brick house in the courtyard of the chateau. Tragically, however, when Jules was eight years old (and his father was thirty-two), Jules' mother became pregnant again, but died with her infant in childbirth. After Jules' mother died, his father became morose, and a local girl was brought in to look after the house and the child. His father did not drink, taking with his meals only half of a small decanter filled with light white wine made with grapes harvested on the estate. After attending the village school, Jules was sent to board at the high school in Moulins because his father was unable to take him back and forth each night, picking him up only on Saturday nights. He stayed only a few months before moving to Nantes to stay with his aunt and her baker husband. His holidays were spent with his father, who finally died of pleurisy at the age of forty-four, the same illness that was to kill his aunt ten years later. With the death of his father, Jules Maigret abandoned his recently begun medical studies and left for Paris, taking residence in a little hotel on the Left Bank. As a medical student, he had found a satisfying challenge in attempting to predict the ultimate cause of death of the patients he encountered, just as he had tried to predict the future professions of his schoolmates when he had been a youngster. Detective Career Undecided about his own future, Maigret had decided to apply for a menial job when a chance meeting with an older acquaintance from the hotel interested him in a career as a policeman. Maigret's friend, Jacquemain, a detective inspector at the Quai des Orfèvres, made his profession sound attractive enough to induce Maigret to join the police force. Alas, Jacquemain was killed by a stray bullet in a street brawl three years later. Thanks to Maigret's superior education, he was quickly promoted to the secretary of the station operator at the Saint George District, and then to the public highways squad. Here he was taken under the wing of Xavier Guichard, a high-ranking official at the Quai des Orfèvres, and also bumped into an old friend from medical school, Felix Jubert. It was Jubert who introduced Maigret to Louise Leonard, who later became Maigret's wife. The two moved into a flat on the Boulevard Richard-Lenoir, where they remain throughout his career. Georges Simenon , who chronicled the career of Maigret, becomes a good friend of both the husband and wife. Following these months of plainclothes work, during which he was not permitted to carry a gun, he was transferred to the vice squad (which was called the "social squad") for a few months, where he dealt with pickpockets, shoplifters, prostitutes and other lowly lawbreakers, patrolling railway stations, large department stores and hotels. When he was finally assigned to investigative detective work at the Quai des Orfèvres, he quickly rose in rank from detective to detective-sergeant to inspector to chief inspector and, finally, commissioner. At the age of thirty (1907), Maigret was transferred to the special squad, more familiarly known as the homicide squad, under Inspector Guillaume. On his first case in his new department, he was accompanied by his superior, Inspector Dufour. Wearing a disguise, Maigret was the first to arrive at an apartment house in the rue du Roi de Sicile, where he was to arrest a Czech for murder. As the tallest and heaviest man, he had the responsibility of making the actual physical arrest, grappling with the suspect until he was finally subdued (with the inspector's assistance) and the handcuffs slapped onto his wrists. Maigret's cases have taken him to many locales in France besides Paris, and he has even travelled to Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands and the United States in his pursuit of evildoers. The Maigrets have no children, but his wife's nephew, Philippe Lauer, also on the police force, is close to them. The chronicler of his adventures, Maigret's old friend Simenon, was forced to give up his writing career in 1973 because of ill health, and Maigret also retired at around the same time. His position as commissioner was taken, appropriately enough, by the dedicated Inspector Lucas, and Maigret and his wife now lead a quiet retirement at their country house in Meung-sur-Loire, near Orleans. Category:Pages Category:People Category:Detectives Category:Characters